


you held me in the desert

by expirings



Category: The Goldfinch (2019), The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: Drabble, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, POV First Person, he's just thinking about boris, this is a few weeks after theo goes back to new york, typical canon warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:48:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23724847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/expirings/pseuds/expirings
Summary: I see him everywhere I go.
Relationships: Theodore Decker/Boris Pavlikovsky
Kudos: 40





	you held me in the desert

I see him everywhere I go. I see him when I look up at the sky and it is cloudless. I see him every time I steal away to smoke a cigarette. I see him in my bed at night, holding me in his skinny arms like he had countless times before. 

I had left him in the desert. He’d kissed me when we were aware of it – and I’d left him. I think of him constantly, endlessly going over everything I could remember from my time with him. The first time we did ecstasy, our first shared cigarette. The night in the pool. Every single hazy memory of his lips on mine, my body in his embrace, and the tight feeling in my chest as we went to bed together. I remembered the mornings after more than I did the acts themselves. I would wake up, usually sick in the bathroom, and always, always, he was there to hold me as I shook, my body aching and my head heavy. We would shower, one at a time, as if we hadn’t seen each other like we had the night before. I would pretend I didn’t know what his tongue felt like, and he would pretend he’d never been between my thighs. 

In the desert, on the nights he wasn’t with me, I remember waking up, panicked, without his arms to grip me tight or his voice to whisper to me in broken English that I was safe. Now, in New York, I spend every night away from him, with no way for us to speak – he’d stopped answering my texts weeks ago. 

I wanted to shy away from the vivid dreams I would have of him. I would dream of us in my bed, shirtless after swimming in the pool, laughing, drunk and high with his hands in my hair and my hands on his hips. I could feel his teeth bite my bottom lip, clumsily, one of those first nights when we’d been out of our minds, stripping til we were bare, our limbs intertwining and our heads in the stars. _Boris_ , I wish I had said that final night. _Come with me. I love you._

I knew he’d have come with me if I’d had the guts to speak. To say more than goodbye after his kiss. He’d held my face in his hands and held me still, just long enough for me to remember his lips for real this time. It wasn’t like those other nights, rushed and frantic and panicked –and what did we fear then? ourselves? being caught? I’m still not sure. His last kiss was not like those nights where I could barely feel myself breathe as he held me. His last kiss was burned into my mouth – no, it was burned into the whole of me. I could remember him so well. I knew him so well. The feeling of his hands holding my  
hands; the harsh, warm press of his lips. 

I miss him terribly, and I see him everywhere and I don’t think I’ll ever see him again. What was I to do without him, but make it as close to I could remember it being when I was with him?

I’ve taken to finding all sorts of places a fifteen-year-old can get cheap liquor and a pack of cigarettes. It’s not too hard to find in New York. At night, in Hobie’s house, I’ll open a window for the smoke. I’ll cradle a bottle in my arms, like I had with Boris so many nights, passing it back and forth between laughter and punches and kisses and dreams. The chaos of Boris, of his tangled hair and crooked teeth and thin fingers – I would dream of him, of the nights we could’ve had, should’ve had, if we hadn’t been so stupid. If we’d known that I would have to leave as quickly as I did. 

I miss him terribly. I don’t know what I’ll do without him.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been thinking quite a bit about Theo and Boris lately. Hope I managed to get Theo's voice right. I love these boys a lot :')  
> Comments mean the world to me <3


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